The Arc of History Bends Toward Nuclear-Armed Countries

Who is more secure today, North Korea and Iran or Libya and Ukraine?

The latest news from North Korea is disappointing. That is, in the nearly three months since President Donald Trump’s Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, prospects for the de-nuclearization of that country seem to be decreasing, not increasing.

On August 24, Trump tweeted that he had directed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not to travel to North Korea for more talks. On August 26, the North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun, mouthpiece for the Pyongyang regime, declared that the U.S. and South Korea were preparing an invasion. And on August 27, a CNBC headline blared, “The US is now ‘worse off’ on North Korea than it was before the Trump-Kim summit, expert says.” Needless to say, the American media are always looking for opportunities to slap Trump around.

It’s hard, in fact, to argue that we’re worse off than we were a year ago, or five years ago. After all, North Korea is no longer setting off nuclear explosions, nor is it firing test missiles into the Pacific, nor is it releasing propaganda videos showing Washington, D.C., in flames, as it did in 2013, 2016, and 2017. Indeed, just last month, North Korea kept a promise made in Singapore and returned the remains of U.S. soldiers who died in the Korean War. It could even be the case that the Trump-Kim meeting had some positive effect on the relationship between the two mercurial leaders. As Trump said in Singapore, the two men now have a “special bond,” and such personal chemistry could well keep a lid on tensions.

What does not seem likely, of course, is that North Korea will actually give up its nuclear weapons. After all, from the North Korean regime’s point of view, that would be stupid. North Korea lives in a rough neighborhood, shadowed by three nuclear superpowers: China, Russia, and the U.S. Then there’s South Korea, which is a sincere friend to the North Korean people, but is no more than a frenemy to the North Korean regime. And 40 miles away, there’s Japan, an historic enemy of all Koreans.

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The point here is not to plead North Korea’s case: the Pyongyang regime is, arguably, the worst in the world. Yet at the same time, it’s wise to understand why the North Koreans act as they do. As the experience of the Korean War taught us, when it comes to North Korean intentions, ignorance is not bliss.

The general rubric for this sort of foreign policy thinking—common here at TAC—is “realism.” By such hard-nosed reckoning, it’s simply unrealistic to think that Kim is going to do something that he doesn’t think is in his interest. And for a couple of decades, the Kim dynasty has understood the value of nuclear weapons. At least until such time as there’s a robust and foolproof missile defense shield, nukes are the great power equalizer.

From Pyongyang’s point of view, the need for such power equalization became all the more urgent after George W. Bush’s 2002 “axis of evil” speech. In that address, the 43rd president singled out North Korea, along with, of course, Iraq and Iran. At that point, all three regimes knew that they were in the crosshairs, and so two of them, North Korea and Iran, got serious about developing a nuclear program. From their point of view, upping their armaments made prefect sense; they needed a plan for defending themselves, and nukes do the trick.

Perversely, the only one of those countries that didn’t make a move towards nuclear weapons was Iraq. Saddam Hussein was anything but innocent; he surely would have developed nukes if he could have—yet he couldn’t. And as we know, he was easily removed from power in 2003. (The non-easy fighting came later, post-“liberation.”)

Thus we can see that nukes are the best friend of a designated “rogue regime.” Indeed, that lesson was underscored by the experience of another rogue nation, Libya. In the wake of regime change in Iraq, Libya voluntarily gave up the rudiments of its nuclear program. Finally, after decades of murderous roguery, Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi seemed to be doing his best to work within with the international order. And yet Gaddafi’s late conversion did him no good: in 2011, the U.S. and other Western nations aided rebels, and he and his government were ignominiously destroyed.

We can point to other cautionary tales about denuclearization. For instance, after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, the newly independent country of Ukraine found that it had inherited some 1,700 nukes from the evil empire.

At the time, a few wise voices said that the Ukrainians would be foolish to give up those weapons. One such voice was realist thinker John J. Mearsheimer who, in 1993, published a piece in Foreign Affairs bluntly entitled, “The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent.”

Mearsheimer argued that the key to Ukraine’s defense “means ensuring that the Russians, who have a history of bad relations with Ukraine, do not move to reconquer it.” He warned, “Ukraine cannot defend itself against a nuclear-armed Russia with conventional weapons.” In particular, Mearsheimer said that Ukraine would be foolish to rely on promises, no matter how comprehensive or high-minded: “No state, including the United States, is going to extend to it a meaningful security guarantee.”

Yet in 1994, urged on by the Clinton administration waving many pieces of paper, Ukraine chose to give up its nukes. It was less than 20 years later when the Russians did exactly what Mearsheimer had predicted—they attacked.

In 2014, after the Russians seized Crimea and were gnawing on Ukraine’s east, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko lamented that his country had fallen into the “trap” of “pacifist illusions” two decades earlier. He added, speaking of his naive predecessors, that they had been lulled into “believing the world had all turned vegetarian.”

Thus we can see: any national leader facing a serious foreign threat—whether democratically elected or a dictatorial tinpot—is better off if he or she can wield a nuclear arsenal.

Now we can see more clearly the choices before North Korea’s Kim. He might be a thoroughly rotten person, and yet he’s well-fortified: the world can’t remove him without enormous cost, so it has to deal with him. Yes, it’s nice to explore whether he might yet be willing to reduce or eliminate his arsenal; he could, after all, have some sudden Damascene conversion. And miracles do happen, although they don’t happen very often. Moreover, it’s entirely possible that if Kim suddenly went peacenik, the non-peaceniks around him would step in to protect their regime, which is to say, get rid of him.

We might pause now to consider that other member of the old axis of evil: Iran.

The Iranians may or may not be abiding by the 2015 nuclear deal, but it’s naive to think that they don’t still want nuclear weapons. And given that Iran is a country of 80 million people surrounded by dangerous neighbors, it’s hard to see how anything short of national annihilation will stop them from getting nukes eventually. What they do with them, of course, is an unknown; this is where diplomacy, deterrence, and, yes, missile defense could yet make the difference.

To be sure, many will deem this assessment to be depressing. As we know, there’s an enormous arms control apparatus in the U.S. and around the world, buoyantly dedicated to disarmament, non-proliferation, and generally beating swords into plowshares. (And there are more than a few regime changers still lurking about—they all have optimistic plans, too.)

Mere facts on the ground, no matter how stubborn, are unlikely to dissuade any of these folks from their ongoing efforts to save the world. Yet as we have seen, the logic of nuclear proliferation is strong. Pakistan, to cite another nuclear-armed country, is a respected international player because of its arsenal, and wouldn’t be without it.

In the meantime, the American national interest requires a rethinking of how countries defend themselves. More specifically, the U.S. can’t expect to be able to continue defending every country against every other country. This faulty status quo is perhaps most glaring on the Korean peninsula. South Korea, which we are pledged to defend, has twice the population of North Korea, and their GDP is almost 100 times higher. Why, then, is it our task to defend Seoul—especially when we run a trade deficit of some $20 billion a year? As this author wrote in June, “It’s simply not normal that one country should do all this defending, and oftentimes pay for the privilege of doing it.”

For his part, Trump might not succeed in denuclearizing North Korea, but he might succeed in energizing the self-defense efforts of South Korea, Japan, and other countries. And yes, such upgraded efforts might include nuclear weapons.

That’s not a particularly optimistic thought; it’s merely a realistic one. And as we have seen, after all the preachy illusions of Left and Right are flitted and frittered away, the world is left with something hard and lasting: reality.

James P. Pinkerton is an author and contributing editor at The American Conservative. He served as a White House policy aide to both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

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19 Responses to The Arc of History Bends Toward Nuclear-Armed Countries

I don’t see US under attack anytime soon by Iran or NK. As such, any talk of “national interest” and “security” from the part of the US are hypocritical. The only reasons the US doesn’t want these countries to have nukes is because the US wants to have the ability to bomb whomever they want whenever they want.

NK and Iran could be perfectly integrated in the global economies, with their citizens having standards of any middle income countries if it weren’t for the persecution and sanctions imposed by the US. US of A is the Evil Empire.

Given the title and premise of the article, one expected a paragraph or two on Israel, another possessor of outlaw nukes who seems quite secure and at ease these days. An important aspect of present nuclear “reality”, one would have thought.

One might also have added that a Europe already living in the shadow of Israel’s arsenal (not to mention the American and Russian ones) probably doesn’t perceive much marginal increase in peril at the prospect of an Iranian bomb.

Mr Pinkerton’s logic is that the US should equip Ukraine with nuclear weapons and allow Iran to acquire them. I wouldn’t disagree but I would point out that possessing nuclear weapons doesn’t provide more than the illusion of security. Any country that launched a nuclear first strike would turn itself into an instant pariah. Secondly, nuclear weapons are militarily useless. They’re much too blunt an instrument. All you can do is attack cities. What military value does that have? What would happen therefore if, for example, North Korea launched a nuclear attack on the US? Would Americans simply lie down and beg for mercy? Or would there be a Pearl Harbor-type reaction, with people vowing to leave no stone unturned until Kim’s regime had been utterly destroyed? Thus, I don’t believe that any country will ever use nuclear weapons, no matter what their leaders may say.

“It’s simply not normal that one country should do all this defending, and oftentimes pay for the privilege of doing it.”

GIGO.

Pinkerton might not see it, or might not want to admit it, but we do it for the bases. Whatever improvements happened on the Korean peninsula happened despite the US best efforts to derail them, and because of initiatives the South Korean government took.

It is plainly laughable to mention Iran and North Korea in the same breath – Iran, courtesy of JCOPA, would have more in common with Libya if it were not for its “unconventional” deterrents in Syria and Iraq.

Pinkerton and Mearsheimer do not understand US impunitivism, and the foreign policy doctrines that strive to manufacture pretexts from “WMDs”, “weapons-program related activities”, preventive war against emerging peer competitors (aka Bush Doctrine) and – Clinton/Trump – non-proliferation enforced at gunpoint. The idea that it would have been in US “national securities interest” – as formulated by the neolibcon establishment elites – to see the Ukraine as an independent nuclear-armed state actor is ridiculous. The great Gamblers don’t want the Ukraine to have nukes any more than they want North Korea, Iran, Russia, or China to have them.

Contra some opinions expressed here, smaller nations are indeed more safe with nuclear weapons than without. Not because of offensive capability; clearly retribution would be cataclysmic. However, these weapons make it very painful to attack them in the first place, even though the attacker – a larger country one might expect – would ultimately prevail.

Deterrence, anyone? As they say, an armed society is a polite society. In a world in which we consider arming elementary school teachers, and consider regime change to be “on the table” at all times, only a fool would let go of their weapons.

Mr. Pinkerton undermines his credibility by claiming Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014. Russian forces already had their base in Sebastopol and Crimea – no invasion necessary and the overwhelmingly Russian inhabitants voted to rejoin Russia after the U.S.-supported coup in the Ukraine, without any casualties. The new coup government with its new unelected leaders installed by the U.S. State Department, as revealed by Victoria Nuland’s own words, proceeded to punish ethnic majority eastern Ukraine by making their language illegal and removing their political representation. Were these people also not Ukrainians?

Mr. Pinkerton rues that the current Ukrainian government, more corrupt than the one before, and riddled with various ideological and violent crazies no one can control, including outright nazis, doesn’t wield nukes to battle the Russians with on their own – or by proxy.

>>We can point to other cautionary tales about denuclearization. For instance, after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, the newly independent country of Ukraine found that it had inherited some 1,700 nukes from the evil empire.

Complete BS. The Ukraine have never inherited anything, these Soviet nukes were always under the direct auspices of Moscow (command codes etc, leaving aside all technological cycles mostly contained inside the present territory of the Russian Federation). Anyway, upkeep of the 3rd largest nuclear arsenal would have considerably crippled not too solid Ukrainian economy in a very short run.

And the bottomline — the present Ukrainian problems have nothing to do with lack of nukes but everything to do with lack of brains in large part of Ukrainian ‘elites’

Id be very careful about saying that the tide is shifting in favor of nuclear bombs.

Pakistan is a nuclear power. Destroy its 3 largest cities and you have effectively eliminated Pakistan as a nation, as a country and as a people. Its largest city is 9 million people. Destroy the largest city and you have eliminated 2/3rds of Pakistan.

Iran isn’t much different but its population is larger and more spread out but Tehran is also 9 million people. Destroy Tehran and you have destroyed almost half the population of Iran. Destroy the top 6 and you have nearly destroyed the nation and the country.

North Korea isn’t even more concentrated. Destroy Pyong Yang and you have essentially destroyed North Korea.

Israel may have a large nuclear arsenal to retaliate but destroy Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and everyone and everything in Israel is gone.

It really sets up a game of Russian roulette where a nation can act as belligerent as it likes without anything other than boycotts and sanctions and embargos. Actions which a totalitarian regime can ignore and survive. However it also sets up an instability forcing the hand of larger powers into pre-emptive nuclear strike. Russia may not have a huge population but it has a huge nuclear arsenal scattered over the largest land mass on earth. China probably has 100 cities with over 1 million people same with the US. One would need a massive nuclear arsenal to win a nuclear war between Russia, China and the US. The US, EU, Russia and China can survive a 1st strike from a nuclear power. However small inconsequential states will not survive a pre-emptive 1st strike.

So the game then becomes drawing that line where a failed state or a terrorist state or totalitarian state becomes so out of control that a pre-emptive strike is justified.

Now the US may have a lot of patience with rogue or failed or terrorist or totalitarian nations threatening it. Russia and China may also have a lot of patience but small nations like Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Iran do not. If they perceive an existential threat then their only choice is pre-emptive nuclear strike and deal with the condemnation of the great powers for a 1st strike. Thus, the more small nations get nuclear weapons the higher the probability of a pre-emptive nuclear strike.

The fallacy is that small nations with nuclear weapons will be safe from the great powers but this is only part of the story.

It really sets up a game of Russian roulette towards a pre-emptive nuclear strike.

If you destroy 1 city in North Korea or 2 cities in Israel or 3 cities on Pakistan or 6 cities in Iran and you have essentially destroyed the majority of the nation and the nations population.

The US, EU, China and Russia may have a wide berth of patience regarding rogue, failed, terrorist, totalitarian states. Each of them can survive a 1st strike from a nuclear weapon. It would take a lot for the great powers to engage in a 1st strike. They would have to feel there was a planned nuclear strike on them to act pre-emptively. However, a 1st strike from a nuclear weapon would essentially cause the target small nation to cease to exist and that grey area is much thinner because the smaller a nation is the more its existence is threatened and thus the easier its use of nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive attack is justified.

What they think is safety is also its greatest nemesis because now its not a matter small or large scale military conflict. Now its a battle of existence versus existence.

Pakistan is a nuclear power. Destroy its 3 largest cities and you have effectively eliminated Pakistan as a nation, as a country and as a people. Its largest city is 9 million people. Destroy the largest city and you have eliminated 2/3rds of Pakistan

Pakistan’s largest city has more like 12 million than 9 million, it isn’t in the most populous province, and it accounts for less than a tenth of Pakistani population, not “two thirds”. You’re also about as off-base regarding Iran.

I really really don’t want to see a nuclear conflict and I consider any use of WMD to categorically immoral, but it is not the case that “destroy Karachi and you’ve destroyed Pakistan”. Pakistan is a big country and could probably survive the loss of some major cities. Same for India and Iran.

You know, when the author refers (unironically) to the USSR as “the evil empire” ™, that’s a cause for concern about his or her mental state. But when said authors throws into the same bowl North Korea, Iran, Saddam’s Iraq and the Ukraine – well, that’s a cause for some serious concern.

The Ukraine post 1991 experienced a downward spiral and constant worsening of the economic socio-political conditions. Yes, even without something like Chechnya, the Ukraine had been turn asunder by internal conflicts – primarily, criminal ones. The fact that post 1991 Ukraine was one of the chief illegal exporter of the military hardware is the matter of the public record. Well, not the “Ukraine” as the country, but rather different military commanders and politicians that did just that knowing full well they can do that – with impunity.

Now imagine such a country retaining the nukes after mid 1990s. If the country had no funds to maintain ordinary hardware, and, thus had to either sell or eliminate the surplus, it’s Highly Likely that the nukes would not fare better. As of right now, even nominally por-Western post-Maidan Ukraine had been caught red-handed selling rocket and plane technologies (along with the example of the tech) to China and North Korea. Imagine, who’d they sell their nukes given an opportunity. Not out of malice or the hate to the West and the Democracy, no – out of misery and lack of money.

But – okay! Let’s agree that such fantasy of the nuclear armed Ukraine SOMEHOW survived to our day, despite all political and economic upheavals, 2 Maidans and whatnot. So – February 2014. What would Turchinov (acting head of State) and his camarilla would do re:Crimea? Lob some nukes? Them?! Who just came into power via bloody coup d’état, would react at what, at first, looked like an impasse in Crimea between the Ukrainian military forces (safely contained in their bases – and having mixed loyalties to begin with) and Polite Men in Green? What, do you really think a couped-in regime would start lobbing nukes in April at Donetsk and Lugansk, when the general picture coming out from here were, indeed, the proverbial coal miners and teachers taking up the arms against what they (quite correctly) perceived to be illegal junta?

Finally, do you really think that Poroshenko, this Chocolate King with his chocolate factory in Lipetzk (Russian Federation) churning out cookies, candies and special assorti gift boxes sold as wide across Russia as, literally, from Kaliningrad and Chechnya to Norilsk and Vladivostok, that this lying piece of… chocolate would nuke something? Him?!

Here’s the lesson. Nuclear armed states exist not thanks to but despite great powers efforts – and, oh boy, do they try to limit the membership in the club (e.g. South Africa)! In fact, pro-Western countries with no chutzpah have rather slim chance to succeed at that.